How We Make Decisions On Track Access

If a railway operator wants to run trains on the rail network, it must seek the Office of Rail and Road’s approval for a track access agreement with Network Rail.

How do we make our decisions on track access? When we consider track access applications, we must do so in accordance with our statutory duties. These include:

- Promoting the use of the network for passengers and freight.
- Taking into account the Secretary of State for Transport’s funds and guidance.
- Protecting the interests of users of railway services.
- Promoting competition for the benefit of rail users.
- Promoting improvements in railway service performance.

Where these duties do not align we must balance them so that we reach a result that is in the best public interest overall.

What factors do we consider when making track access decisions? We look at the following things before we grant approval:

- Whether there is fair and efficient use of capacity and determining what that is in cases where an operator and Network Rail cannot agree a contract.
- The effect on the Secretary of State’s funds, which recognises the need to work within fixed government budgets.
- Whether new services could generate their own revenue, not just take it away from the current operator. We call this the ‘not primarily abstractive’ test.
- Whether the new services would allow more competition resulting in benefits for passengers (e.g. through lower fares).
- What impact extra services could have on the performance of existing services, especially on a busy network.
- Where we have competing applications for limited capacity, the costs and benefits of the available options.

Open Access Operators These are train operators which operate independently of franchises.

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) values the benefits of competition and supports the introduction of new ‘open access’ services, or the continuation of existing services, where they meet our published criteria and bring real benefits to passengers.

Economic Equilibrium Test We will also undertake the Economic Equilibrium Test on new open access services where the test is requested by a relevant party. This test looks at the overall impact of proposals on existing franchises.